


147. hometown blues

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [80]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8062387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “I thought the convent would still be here,” Helena says. “Where it was. I thought.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: allusion to abuse]

Where the convent should be, there is only rubble. Torn-down-building-space. Helena doesn’t know why she’s disappointed – she should be glad, that this place of sorrows is gone. She should be happy. So happy.

“Hey,” says Sarah, and her shoulder presses up against Helena’s. Helena leans into it. She watches the space, waits for it to blink first. Sarah’s still talking. “This where it was?”

“Yes,” Helena says. She folds her arms around her middle, hugs herself, sways back and forth. “This is the place where it was.”

Sarah’s arm is around her shoulders and Helena shakes, leans on Sarah heavier. Sarah holds the weight. “I thought it would still be here,” Helena says. “Where it was. I thought.” Well. She’d thought, stupidly, that it would be here so Helena could tear it down. The whole flight over here, she’d clenched her fingers into the fabric over her knees and imagined pulling the stones of this place out, one by one. All the children running out. She’d imagined _being_ something.

“You wanna show me?” Sarah says quietly.

“No,” Helena says. Pauses. “Yes.” She slips out of Sarah’s half-hold, grabs her wrist and tugs lightly. She can feel the reassuring trip of Sarah’s pulse between the bones of her wrist, comfortingly caged. She pulls Sarah forward.

“Maggie and Tomas got me in a truck,” she says. “The truck drove down this road. I was in the back. I called Maggie _ma_ and she said no, because that was not her name.”

They’re at the top of the road. “The other girls watched me through the window when I got into the truck,” she says, as they head towards the building stones. Where the windows should be, Danya’s face and Ionna’s and Sofia’s, there is only sky. “None of them waved. Nobody said goodbye. _Sestra_ Olga spat on the ground.”

Sarah’s hand wraps around her wrist and squeezes. Helena can’t help the small sad breath-sound that escapes between her teeth.

“Sounds like a bitch,” Sarah says, but the tone of her voice says _I’m sorry_.

“Yes,” Helena says. “She was this.” _I know. It’s okay._

The space where the great wooden doors were is – empty, now. On either side of it are piles of stones. Helena spitefully hops over one of the piles instead of taking the door. Sarah, still tethered to Helena by their clasped hands, heads through the door-space.

Inside of the space-where-there-were-walls Helena goes quiet. She can’t keep telling the story. The ceiling is gone but she can feel it pressing down over her head. The floor is covered in grass and hopeful dandelions but she can remember scrubbing it.

Her stomach growls.

“We can go back,” Sarah says quietly. She’s shifting from foot to foot and Helena realizes that it would be kinder, kinder to Sarah, if they turned around right now and left and flew back to Canada and went home. She doesn’t think either of them know why when Helena said _I need to go back_ Sarah said _I’ll come with you_. Helena doesn’t really know. She hasn’t been thinking about it, in case it went away.

“Not yet,” Helena says. “I have to…” She doesn’t know. She has to, though, it’s important. She drops Sarah’s hand. She crushes all the dandelions as she walks, which makes her want to scream for reasons she doesn’t understand. And then she’s there: the cellar door, still there in the floor. She pulls it open.

The air smells the same and Helena turns around and stumbles and she’s running and someone is there and she knocks them to the ground because she can’t go back in there she can’t she _can’t_ and it’s Sarah.

“Oh,” she says, and blinks away to her hands around Sarah’s throat. _Oh_ and then she’s up again, stumbling, back with her hands splayed wide open I’m sorry _please_.

“You okay?” Sarah says, sitting up, except it sounds less like a question and more like a reprimand.

“Yes,” Helena says.

“Sorry,” Helena says.

“It wasn’t,” Helena says, “what I thought it would be.”

“Yeah, think that’s a theme,” Sarah mutters dourly, scrubbing at her throat. She blinks at Helena, sighs; all of her tension leaves her. “Shit, I’m sorry. I know this is hard, yeah?”

Helena nods. Sarah stands up again, wincing, brushes the dirt from her pants and then puts both her hands on Helena’s forearms. She rubs her hands, up, down. Helena didn’t know that was a way you could touch someone, not really. She didn’t know it could ground you.

“You’re brave,” Sarah says, “comin’ back here. You know that.”

Helena folds her lips between her teeth, and her eyes dart away from Sarah’s. Brave is a thing that she would like to be, but it’s – not. Really. This was just something she had to do. That’s all.

“If you want to show me,” Sarah says. “I want to see. If you don’t, we can go ‘n find out how shitty burgers are in Ukrainian towns where the streets aren’t paved.”

“They like the dirt,” Helena says, and then – crack! – she feels herself settle, and she’s Helena again: years and years gone from the scared little girl she was here, hiding underground.

“No,” she says, “I want to show you,” and she leads Sarah to the cellar door.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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